The spinal cord is a main pathway connecting the brain to the peripheral nervous system. Noninvasive image?based assessment of this structure is an increasingly demanding healthcare service. This project cultivates the engineering techniques required for the development of a computer?aided spinal?scan assessment software toolkit for diagnosis of spinal cord problems.

Destruction of the horn bud in 4-6 wk old calves using either hot-iron or chemical disbudding is a common practice in the dairy industry. There is a limited body of research on the effects of chemical disbudding and the pain it causes to the animal as well as research on appropriate methods to mitigate the pain following this procedure, and research to identify appropriate pain managements is needed.

The population age distribution is undergoing an “inversion” and the dependency ratio, i.e., the proportion of older adults who are not working over the number of adults who are working, is increasing. This has an effect on a society’s ability to deliver community-care services and the underlying national economic capacity to pay for their needs. Advances in ICT (information and communications technologies) promise to provide support for affordable systems of care that enable human resources to be used more effectively.

The project involves development, validation, and application of new medical image analysis algorithm where cortical thickness is measured from serial brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with improved efficiency and greater sensitivity. Cortical thickness is a relatively new metric that correlates with clinical and cognitive worsening in a variety of neurologic disorders such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease.

The joint-effort project by Nordion Inc and the University of Ottawa Heart Institute aims to develop a series of radiolabeled necrostatin derivatives, which act as imaging agents based on necroptosis (programmed necrosis - a type of cell death) inhibitors to help diagnose disease (such as cardiovascular, neurological diseases and cancer) and monitor their treatment effects. The roles of the fellow are to design, synthesize and characterize these agents and to assist in testing their biological properties through further in vitro and in vivo evaluation.

Stem cells and other pluripotent cells are under active investigation for the development of new therapeutic treatments to regenerate and repair diseased and damaged tissues. Published studies indicate that some mesenchymal cells derived from adult human hair follicles exhibit stem cell properties and can form different cells types if they are given specific biological signals without the need to genetically modify the cells.

The Brodt laboratory engineered and developed a novel IGF-targeting molecule (the IGF-Trap) with otent anti-cancer effects. The objective of this project is to optimize the use of this potential drug in re-clinical cancer models and develop sensitive biomarkers for assessing and predicting its effect. In addition, the effect of this inhibitor on pancreatic cancer growth and metastasis and its utility in nononcology ndication will be evaluated.

Hemophilia is a rare blood coagulation disorder caused by a deficiency or deformity in one of 12 primary clotting factors. Hemophiliacs experience insufficient healing and prolonged bleeding either from trauma or unprompted bleeding. We are able to maintain a level of the deficient factors in a patient through direct and immediate infusion of a drug into the blood. To determine the frequency of injections and the appropriate dosage, we need to consider how long a drug will stay in a child’s body.